July 22, 2008

Dear Partners,

We wanted to update you on some recent activities related to the August 17th Directive.  On July 17th, Senators Baucus and Rockefeller introduced a resolution to nullify the directive under the Congressional Review Act.

Thanks to many of you, most of the Members of the New England Congressional Delegation signed-on to the resolution including: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. John Reed (D-RI), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), John Sununu (R-NH), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT).  We also received word yesterday that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was signing on as well.

The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to review every new federal regulation issued by government agencies and, by passage of a joint resolution, overrule a regulation.  Senators have 60 days from the time a rule is submitted to both Houses of Congress and the Comptroller General (without counting days on which a House of Congress was in a recess for more than 3 days) to file a challenge to the proposed regulation. 

The aim was to file this resolution in time to give it “privileged status.” This would have meant that the resolution would be protected from filibuster or any other tactics meant to delay its vote.

Unfortunately, we learned yesterday afternoon that the Senate Parliamentarian determined that the resolution to disapprove the August 17th SCHIP directive was not filed in time for it to have "privileged" status under the Congressional Review Act. Without the privileged status, the Senate is not likely to have time to act on the resolution before the August recess. This ruling also has led to the cancellation of a markup originally scheduled for today in the Finance Committee.

We know this is another disappointment in on the road to halt the August 17th CMS Directive from taking effect.  We will keep you posted if we learn more.

In the meantime, we know a number of states are working with CMS to meet the requirements of the August 17th Directive.  If your state receives any news about whether it meets the requirements or not, please let me know (617-275-2929, arosenthal@communitycatalyst.org). 

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Amy Rosenthal
Project Director